Four year-old startup Matrix Semiconductor Inc. today said Nintendo has invested $15 million in the company, bringing the total funding raised by Matrix to $95 million.

Matrix claims to be the first company to commercialize low-cost, high-density 3-D ICs. Its first product is a non-volatile memory specifically designed for use in portable electronics. This marks an area of interest for Nintendo, as the Matrix 3-D memory is designed for storage and is field programmable. This would allow games developers programming flexibility and greatly reduce inventory complexity and costs, the company said.

&#8220;The portable and mobile device markets are expanding rapidly. Matrix&#8217;s cost and density advantages over existing technologies support the memory requirements of our portable video game machine, Game Boy Advance,&#8221; said Yasuhiro Minagawa, Nintendo&#8217;s PR manager, in a statement. &#8220;We believe Matrix&#8217;s technology will help us to make our exciting game titles more efficiently.&#8221;

Nintendo&#8217;s investment seems to be a one-off rather than part of an actual round of funding. By December 2001 Matrix had raised over $80 million from Benchmark Capital, Skymoon Ventures, Microsoft, and other consumer electronics manufacturers. Taiwan Semicondcutor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. has been manufacturing Matrix&#8217;s 3-D memory since 2001, although general availability of the memory technology has not yet been announced.